Your Right to Know

WASHINGTON — The White House said yesterday that Central Americans trying to cross the U.S.
border should know “they will not be welcome to this country,” a day after the United States
deported a planeload of women and children to Honduras.

A charter flight on Monday from New Mexico to San Pedro Sula, the city with the highest murder
rate in the world, transported 17 Honduran women, as well as 12 girls and nine boys between 18
months and 15 years old.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the return of the Hondurans should be a clear signal to
those thinking about crossing the border that “they’re entitled to due process but they will not be
welcome to this country with open arms.”

The return of the Hondurans was the most high-profile example of President Barack Obama’s
struggle to gain control of an influx of child migrants from Central America that is overwhelming
immigration resources and leading to protests from people angry at the government for housing some
border-crossers in communities across the country.

Organizations working with illegal migrants said the U.S. flight would have little effect on
Honduran children looking to escape a country racked by gang violence and the world’s highest
murder rate.

Waving U.S. flags and playing patriotic music, dozens of protesters demonstrated in southern
Arizona yesterday against the arrival of undocumented immigrants for processing at a center near
the border before being returned to their homelands.

Demonstrators complained that the federal government’s response to a surge of new arrivals from
Central America was putting their communities at risk.